


Who Could Ever Leave Me?

by That_stupid_girl



Series: Help Me Hold On to You [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Boarding School, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Food Issues, Lena Luthor Needs a Hug, Underage Drinking, healthy coping mechanisms? Lena would love to have one someday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-06 07:55:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20288041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_stupid_girl/pseuds/That_stupid_girl
Summary: Lena Luthor is fourteen years old when she meets Veronica Sinclair. It's dramatic to say that Veronica is Lena's downfall (it's not like Lena ever had all that far to fall), but she gives Lena all the shortcuts to rock bottom, and it takes Lena a hell of a while to unlearn them. She is eighteen when she meets Jack Spheer. He's very much not Veronica, and he's the closest Lena ever comes to being in love with a man.orThe one where Lena is a little fucked up so she gets a lot fucked up for quite some time.





	1. They See Right Through Me

**Author's Note:**

> it bad lmao.
> 
> backstory for lena. this one will go through college and then the next one will be "current"

Lena is fourteen years old when she meets Veronica Sinclair.

Veronica enters St. Brigid’s as a junior with long legs and red lipstick. At this point in her life, Lena isn’t Lena Luthor. She’s just Lena, a girl a little too young to be a sophomore with a hard mother and an older brother that all the teachers remember as brilliant. She isn’t the kind of person who draws a lot of attention outside of the classroom, but Veronica is.

They live on the same floor in Talbot House that year but don’t share any classes. Lena doesn’t see her often, but she finds herself drawn to the older girl. Even years later, long after Lena’s come to terms with her sexuality, she thinks it had as much to do with the way Veronica commanded a room as Lena’s attraction to her. 

They share two classes the first semester of Lena’s junior year and end up in the same dorm again, with Lena a floor above Veronica in St. Mary’s. Lena doesn’t think anything of it, even when Mrs. George assigns she and Veronica as lab partners in Advanced Chemistry. Lena does practically all the work for the labs they do together, but Veronica isn’t unhelpful, and she isn’t antagonistic toward Lena like Lena knows she can be.

Still, Veronica is by no means an important part of Lena’s day-to-day life until her sixteenth birthday.

Lena turns sixteen on the third Friday of the school year, which means two things: she has chemistry last period, and it’s the weekend.

“Happy birthday,” Veronica says when she sits down beside Lena. She doesn’t sound particularly genuine, but Lena’s surprised she remembered at all, even though her birthday was in All School Announcements with all the others on Monday.

“Thanks,” Lena says and hopes her voice doesn’t sound as high as it feels. It’s a lab day, but Veronica and Lena hardly talk for the rest of class. As Lena’s packing up her things, though, Veronica stops her.

“We’re having a kickback in Charlie Hearst’s room tonight for his birthday. It’s yours too, so I thought you’d want to come.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question, and Lena understands that, even if she hadn’t wanted to come, declining wouldn’t be the smartest decision.

“Okay.” Lena doesn’t blush as Veronica looks at her, and she thinks she sees the corners of the girl’s lips twitch upward briefly.

“Meet me at my room at nine.” With that, Veronica stands up from her seat and walks—practically struts, really—out of the room, leaving Lena with a queasy feeling in her stomach. She can’t tell if it’s excitement, dread, or just nerves. She’s never done anything like this before, not even at home where there weren’t faculty on the lookout.

That night, after Lena’s done most of her homework and the sun has set, Lena stands in front of her closet with no idea what to wear. She’s still in her uniform and isn’t sure whether she should change into something else. Her roommate’s out of the room playing capture the flag, so there’s no one there to watch as Lena tries on an embarrassing number of outfits before switching her uniform shirt for a white tank top but leaving her green and gray plaid skirt on. She puts her flats back on without the knee socks and waits for nine o’clock.

She doesn’t actually know where Veronica’s room is, just that she’s on the second floor, so a few minutes before nine Lena slips her phone and key in her skirt pocket and takes the stairs down to two. She finds Veronica’s room—a single at the end of the hall—quickly, but she doesn’t want to be early, so she stares at the watch on her wrist and waits. About thirty seconds after nine, she knocks.

A senior girl wearing her full uniform minus tie and blazer opens the door. Her name is Katherine and she’s in Lena’s English class, but she’s blonde and tiny and very much not Veronica. She’s chewing gum and doesn’t look particularly pleased to see Lena, but she opens the door for her to come in.

“Ronnie, your Luthor’s here,” she says as she closes the door behind Lena. “You can sit wherever,” she adds to Lena, motioning toward the bed and desk. Veronica’s putting on eyeshadow in front of the mirror over her dresser. Lena’s glad she kept her uniform skirt on, if only because Veronica’s wearing hers, though Veronica has on a black tank top far skimpier than Lena’s and her skirt is rolled at the waist in a way that makes her legs look too long and Lena’s stomach feel too tight. She chooses not to focus on it.

There’s another girl sitting on Veronica’s bed texting on a Blackberry, but Lena doesn’t know her name. She looks up when Lena sits down, tentative, on the end of the bed and smiles at her. It’s kind in a way Lena hasn’t seen either Veronica or Katherine be. 

“I’m Ashley,” she says, and Lena’s not sure why the British accent surprises her. Most of the student body is American, but there are rich people in England, too. 

“Lena,” she offers with a small smile. Ashley grins wider.

“I know who you are, Honor Roll.” Lena blushes at that, and she hears Veronica snort from her place by the mirror. Ashley’s smile softens, though, and she winks at Lena before looking back to her phone.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Veronica says a few minutes later, capping her lipstick and watching herself press her lips together in the mirror.

“Finally,” Katherine mutters, unfurling herself from Veronica’s desk chair. Ashley rolls her eyes at Katherine’s comment as she gets up, and Lena studiously avoids looking at the sliver of dark skin between the bottom of her white t-shirt and the top of her jeans. When she turns her head away from Ashley, though, she notices Veronica watching her, a smirk on her face and a worrying curiosity in her eyes. Lena schools her own face into a neutral confidence she doesn’t feel, and lets the other girls leave the room in front of her.

“Come on, Honor Roll,” Veronica laughs, clearly enjoying the nickname, as she ushers Lena out of her room to lock the door behind her.

Lena stays a few steps behind the other girls as they walk, completely at ease, toward Pruitt. It’s dark out, and there aren’t any teachers hanging around, but they still take the long way, sticking close to the building, to avoid the windows of the Hansens or Mr. Smith’s apartment on the first floor.

Ian Donahue is standing outside the door on the right side of the building, his uniform shirt untucked from his gray slacks as he runs his hand over his newly buzzed red hair. Lena’s known him long enough—two years—to recognize it as a nervous tick. He drops his hand and stands up straighter when he sees them. 

“Veronica,” he greets, because she’s clearly the one leading them. She nods at him, her face neutral. “Hey, Lena,” he adds a moment later as he unlocks the door to the dorm. His Irish lilt comes out softer this time, and Lena smiles at him, fighting against ducking her head. They’re in the same class, and he’s similarly quiet and studious, so they’ve always gotten on well without ever being close. 

He ushers them in quickly, glancing around to make sure no one—or at least no adult—is watching, and shuts the door softly behind him. Charlie lives on the top floor, so the four girls rush up the two flights of stairs to three. Veronica leads them into the hall and stops in front of the first door on the right. Lena can hear music playing softly as Veronica knocks out a clear pattern. Ian steps up beside her, rubbing at his head again when she smiles at him.

Charlie opens the door a moment later, sticking his curly dark head out first to make sure it’s actually someone he invited. He grins at Veronica, and his blue eyes slide over Lena like he doesn’t notice she’s there. It might sound strange, but it’s probably Lena’s preferred reaction. She’s never liked drawing attention to herself, and just because she admires Veronica for her ability to be the center of every room doesn’t mean Lena has any desire to do the same.

Lena slips in through the barely open door just after Ashley with Ian close behind her. He closes the door softly when he steps into the room. With the four of them, there’s a dozen or so people. Lena recognizes all of them but doesn’t know everyone’s names.

Including Ian and herself, Lena recognizes three juniors and one sophomore: Allie Bates is Charlie’s roommate Ellis’s girlfriend and is currently on his lap with her arm thrown backward around his neck, and Greg Harrison, who, to be fair, might actually be a few days older than Lena, is Cliff’s little brother. Greg’s standing just behind Cliff, right at his shoulder, and when Ian sidles over to take a beer from Charlie, Lena realizes that she is, just as Katherine said, Veronica’s Luthor, at least when she’s in this room of rich kids.

Almost as soon as they walk in, Katherine moves to sit between the body that is Allie and Ellis and a senior boy Lena recognizes as one of Ellis and Charlie’s soccer teammates. He calls for a beer for Katherine, and Travis Wayne from Lena’s calc class opens one of the mini fridges to pass her one. Charlie, clearly retaking his seat, sits on his bed. Ashley tucks herself under his arm, but pats the space beside her for Lena to take. Until this point, Lena hadn’t known they were an item, but now she’s sure she remembers seeing them together. A moment later, Veronica sits on her other side, passing her a plastic cup half-full of something Lena can smell to be straight vodka.

Veronica holds her gaze as she drinks from her own cup, though, and Lena knows that this is a challenge, or at least a test, so she downs half the drink in one go and doesn’t shudder at the acrid taste. It makes the corners of Veronica’s lips curl up into something Lena finds herself unwilling to call a smile, though, so she doesn’t mind too much. 

Still, the vodka’s awful, and when Lena finishes the cup Veronica brings her another, this time thankfully mixed with cranberry juice. It’s the first time Lena’s had vodka, though she drank from a bottle of her father’s scotch after his funeral with Lex, and that was almost as bad. She’s only ever been drunk once, and that was off wine, so the loosening of her fingers after just those two drinks surprises her more than she’s willing to admit. 

Charlie’s room faces the woods at the edge of campus, so Lena isn’t too surprised when Travis opens the window and pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He offers them around the room, but Veronica crinkles her nose and insists that she doesn’t smoke Newports. Lena declines, too, and isn’t sure whether she would prefer that people think she doesn’t want to smoke or that she’s simply going along with what Veronica does.

She stays by Veronica the whole night, even as the older girl flirts with Malachi whom Lena sits next to most days in Holocaust Studies. Lena’s drunk when they walk back minutes before midnight, but she stays fairly quiet. Ashley and Katherine break off to head to Calloway House, so it’s just Lena and Veronica for the last minute of the trip to St. Mary’s. Lena’s surprised when Veronica walks the extra flight up to the third floor with her, and she tries not to blush as she stops in front of her room.

“Night, Honor Roll,” Veronica grins. Lena can’t help but feel the smile’s a little predatory, almost malicious, and she’s worried about the lack of unease she feels. Veronica turns back to the stairs, and Lena’s not sure if it’s an accident when her fingers brush Lena’s waist. Regardless, it makes her shiver in a way she’d rather not consider. 

When she opens her door, Ramey’s already in bed reading from _ Much Ado About Nothing _. She looks up when Lena comes in. Lena gives her what she hopes is a casual smile, then proceeds to trip over a pair of shoes she’d forgotten she left out. Ramey’s eyebrows fly up in glee.

“Are you drunk?” she asks, clearly incredulous and amused. Lena flushes and doesn’t answer. Ramey laughs. 

“Well,” Ramey says, “Ms. Walker will be by soon. Hurry up and get in bed and it’ll be fine.” 

“Thanks.” Lena quickly pulls a pair of leggings on under her skirt before taking it off, then turns away from her roommate to strip out of her shirt and bra and put on a Chess Club t-shirt. She still has her makeup on, but she climbs into bed and turns off the light on the corner of her desk anyway.

“Have you done the English reading?” Ramey asks moments later. Lena can hear Ms. Walker talking to someone down the hall. 

“Yeah. Finished it this afternoon.” Ramey laughs again.

“Of course you did. I don’t understand any of it. I don’t know why I thought taking a Shakespeare class was a good idea.”

“Because Shakespeare’s good and you love Ms. Merrill.” She rolls over, half-hoping to fall asleep before Ms. Walker gets to their room. “You can read my copy if you want. It’s annotated.” 

“Yes please. You’re the best.” 

“It’s in my bag.” She hears Ramey get up from her bed and cross the room to Lena’s side. She opens Lena’s bag to grab the book, and isn’t back in bed yet when Ms. Walker knocks.

“Come in,” Ramey calls, climbing back into her bed. Ms. Walker steps into the room.

“Both here?” she asks, more for formality than anything.

“Both here,” Ramey grins.

“Both here,” Lena repeats without raising her head, hoping that neither her drunkenness nor her nerves about her drunkenness are noticeable.

“Okay. I’ll let you sleep, Lena. Goodnight, girls.” She closes the door behind her. Lena feels herself relax. Even though Ramey still has the light on, Lena’s asleep in minutes. She didn’t even take any melatonin. 

Lena’s life continues in more or less that same fashion for the next few months, which is to say she becomes Veronica’s <strike> lackey </strike> friend. She still works with her in chemistry, and she’s started sitting beside her in calculus, too. Katherine sits next to Lena—and, by extension, Ramey—in their English class, now, but it’s clearly not particularly of her own volition. Lena starts talking to Ian more in their shared classes, since she’s seeing him more often out of class, too.

She can tell that he likes her, and Veronica encourages it whenever she sees the two of them together, so Lena continues to pretend she’s not flirting with him, even though she knows, not even that deep down, that she’s fully leading him on. She says yes when he asks her to Winter Formal, though, and her mother seems pleased with the pictures. Lena hates his haircut, and he usually smells like cigarettes and soap, but he’s sweet and shy and acts like a real gentleman. So much so that, even though she’s dating him, she fucks Veronica before she even kisses Ian.

It goes like this: about a week after they get back from Christmas break, Veronica invites her to a kickback in Cliff’s room. That in and of itself isn’t anything unusual. Lena drinks four shots of vodka with cranberry juice and smokes weed and Veronica’s Marlboros out his open window. Ian is there beside her the whole time, but all she can think about is Veronica’s hand on her back and her lipstick on the cigarette she passes Lena.

She squeezes Ian’s hand when she and Veronica leave to head back to St. Mary’s, and his smile is genuine. She’d kiss him back if he kissed her, but he doesn’t, so she leaves with Veronica. They stop at Veronica’s room first, and Veronica seems like she means it when she tells Lena she likes hanging out with her. 

Lena’s still in her clothes when Ms. Walker comes by for room check, but she’s gotten good at faking sober. It’s almost too easy. Just after her dorm parent leaves, Lena gets a text from Veronica.

_ bitch i think u have my lighter. can u bring it back? _

Lena’s not sure why she had Veronica’s lighter in the first place, and she doesn’t remember pocketing it, but she does have it when she checks. She’s still uneasy about sneaking out at all, even if she does a lot of sneaking in with Veronica and her friends. Still, she can’t really say no to the girl, so she tells her she’ll be down in a few minutes. Ramey’s already asleep, so Lena doesn’t have to explain anything when she slips out of the room and dashes down the stairs.

Veronica’s door is unlocked, so Lena opens it without knocking. Her mouth goes dry when she enters, and she hopes her face isn’t as red as it is warm when she sees Veronica, still in her skirt but topless in just a lacy bra. At first Lena thinks she’s doing a good job of hiding how she feels, but as she holds the lighter out to Veronica she sees something in the girl’s eyes that makes it very clear that Veronica knows _ exactly _ what Lena’s feeling.

Lena’s crossed enough that she doesn’t even think about Ian as she kisses Veronica, and she doesn’t think about Ian as Veronica drags her nails down Lena’s thighs, and she doesn’t think about Ian as she comes, breathing out “Ronnie” into Veronica’s hand over her mouth. She doesn’t think about Ian while she sucks at Veronica’s clit, but she does think about him as she walks back to her own room close to three in the morning.

She doesn’t tell him, of course, and it makes her feel terrible, but not terrible enough to break it off with him. He’s the perfect boy in that he’s normal enough to annoy her mother into saying she could do better, but still rich enough and smooth enough and connected enough that Lillian doesn’t really believe herself. Besides, she doesn’t want to hurt him.

It’s a coward’s truth, and Lena knows it, but of course that isn’t the real reason. 

Still, she goes to all the dances with Ian, kisses him sweet and short, hangs out with him on the weekends, and fucks Veronica in her bedroom after. 

She doesn’t spend much time alone, anymore, not even in the mornings. She goes to breakfast with Ronnie and Ian and the others, and drinks coffee while Ian eats probably as much as she eats in a day. After breakfast, the whole lot of them sneak behind the chapel to smoke, then clean the cigarette stench off themselves before the day starts.

She spends less time on her homework, but manages to keep up the same grades. She’s not sure how—or if—Veronica’s passing at all; she never sees the other girl do any work. On a Saturday, Veronica invites her down to her room under the guise of homework. Lena’s not particularly hopeful, but she needs to work, so she loads up her backpack and heads down anyway.

As suspected, Veronica kisses her almost as soon as she gets in the door. Lena sighs, but kisses back before pushing Veronica away.

“I actually need to work, Ronnie.” Veronica rolls her eyes.

“Bitch.” If it were anyone else, Lena would say it was playful and not malicious.

“Come on,” Veronica whines when Lena starts to actually unpack her books. 

“I seriously need to get this done.” The other girl scoffs, starting to unbutton her shirt. Lena swallows and averts her eyes.

“Just take a study buddy and do it all later. Look, I even—” She stops talking, digging through the top drawer of her dresser before pulling out an Advil bottle. She opens it and dumps a few blue pills into her hand, holding them out to Lena. “See? I’ll take one too so we’ll actually get your work done.” Lena doesn’t particularly want to take Adderall, but she, again, can’t very well say no to Veronica, so she rolls her eyes and concedes, and that’s how it goes for the next few months.

In April, some of the people Lena hangs out with—namely Veronica, Ashley, Charlie, and Malachi—get busted with pot. Lena’s not sure how it all goes down, but Veronica manages to pin all the blame on Ashley, who gets expelled. Charlie, Malachi, and Ronnie only get half a week’s suspension. When she hears, something uncomfortable curls in Lena’s gut. 

She likes Ashley, always has. She’s always been more than nice to Lena, and looks out for her in a way none of the others seem to. Besides, she definitely knows about Lena and Veronica, and hasn’t said anything. She hasn’t even given them any weird looks like Katherine often does. Veronica invites her to her room the night she gets back, and it’s the first time sleeping with the other girl actually makes her feel gross and not just guilty. 

After Ashley gets expelled, rumors about Veronica and Lena start to go around. Lena knows that Katherine’s the one spreading them, but she doubts Veronica’s other friends are particularly pleased with her. Still, Veronica’s too, well, Veronica for anyone to actually say anything to her face, so they spread rumors.

As soon as she hears them, Lena knows what will happen, and she’s right. Veronica stops sleeping with her and starts spreading rumors about Lena. It’s all a bit pedestrian, but it still hurts far more than Lena would ever admit. She shouldn’t be in love with someone like Veronica Sinclair, and anything that comes of it is her own damn fault.

This time, though, she lies straight to Ian’s face, tells him that she doesn’t know what the rumors regarding herself and Veronica together are about, but that she and Veronica had a falling out, so Veronica’s telling everyone about how Lena tried to seduce her. It’s a clear lie, and she can tell that Ian doesn’t believe it, not really, but he at least pretends to, so they don’t breakup. 

It creates a weird set of alliances in their friend group. Not many people liked Veronica before, and now she has no one even pretending to be her good friend. Still, they all hang out together, and, still, Veronica seems to be in charge.

It certainly isn’t ideal, but it allows the last month and a half of the year to pass without too much incident. Lena drinks as much as before, smokes like a chimney whenever she gets the chance, sneaks into Ian’s room to sleep with him even though it makes her want to vomit every time, gets her own dealer, and ends the year with the highest GPA in her class. Lena pretends she’s convincing anyone that she’s not gay, and the whole school pretends to believe her. Despite the lack of change in Lena's social status, an emptiness stronger than anything she's ever felt permeates her entire being and persists.


	2. I See Right Through Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still can't believe this is lowkey based on a taylor swift song lmao
> 
> anyway. this is a bit disjointed but hopefully okay. idk if anyone's really reading this, but there's going to be another work in the series that's just another retelling of kara and lena falling in love. also i've never actually done coke so don't trust anything that's written about that!

Lena smokes Marlboro Reds because Veronica smokes Marlboro Reds. Even after Veronica graduates and leaves for NYU, even after Lena graduates and starts at MIT, even after Lena “quits,” she smokes Marlboro Reds. Right now, though, she’s smoking out the window that used to be Veronica’s, burning incense that she’s also not supposed to have in her dorm to cover the smell.

The room assignment was, of course, a coincidence, but Lena isn’t a fan of the twist in her gut every time she walks through her door. It’s worse when Ian’s here, and worse still when they fuck on Lena’s bed and Lena has to think about what Veronica did to her in this very room to make herself cum. The whole thing’s a huge mess. Lena can’t wait for the year to be over.

Since getting into MIT, it all seems to matter far less. Lena knows that these kids are the children of <strike> her father’s </strike> Lex’s work associates, but she finds herself caring less and less what they think of her. Despite that, she plays her role well, effectively taking over Veronica’s part as rich bitch of the student body while all the teachers love her. She plays the role, because while she tells herself she doesn’t care what these people think of her, she does, so she stays with Ian, and she stays cold, and she stays smart. There’s not even two months left, then she just has to make it through the summer before she can start somewhere new.

The Dean of Academics emails Lena and, presumably, a few other students to ask them to write a speech. Lena’s the president of their Cum Laude chapter, and she’s had the highest GPA every year. She knows what’s expected of her, and she knows she’s gotten the grades. If she’s not valedictorian it’ll feel like the end of the world, as dramatic as that sounds.

She sends her speech in twenty minutes before the deadline and hopes it’s written well enough to hide the fact that she hates being here. She gets the email that she’s valedictorian as they’re lining up for Baccalaureate the evening before Honors Day. Her automatic response is to relax into the relief it brings, but it doesn’t last as she starts to realize it brings no real pleasure, just an absence of mortification.

Regardless, she smiles at the congratulations of a few classmates who were also up for it, and she congratulates Harper on salutatorian. She smiles through Honors Day the next morning, despite the pit that grows in her stomach when she realizes that her mother actually didn’t show up. Lex is there, of course, in the second row behind her class, but he doesn’t look quite like his usual self. She tries to shake it off, and smiles for real when he claps harder than anyone every time her name is called.

That night, Lex stays in a hotel off campus and Lena, Ian, Allie Bates, Greg Harrison, and a few of the other people Lena pretends to be friends with sneak off campus to the same hotel Lex is in. Charlie and Ellis got a room for the weekend so they could see graduation and come to the Senior Party, but they want to get fucked up tonight, too. Lena knows it’s a ridiculously stupid idea—really, she does—but she sneaks off campus anyway. 

Lena plans not to get too fucked, but it doesn’t work as well as she’d hoped. She snorts Ellis’s coke as he holds out the spoon for her, and before she’s even sniffed her nose clear she knows it was more than a terrible idea. The high makes her grin, but she can’t tell if she’s queasy because of it or from a longing she can’t place. 

She sticks next to Ian the whole night and bites her tongue to avoid telling him that she’s not sure she even likes him as a friend, though she knows that isn’t true. There’s no real connection, even platonic, but she does believe he’s as good a person as any of them. Still, she stays quiet, drumming her fingers against his thigh even as she wants to be anywhere else.

Charlie’s stayed sober enough the whole night that Lena trusts him to drive the empty roads back to campus, so when he offers her a ride, she agrees even though she knows he isn’t being polite. She fucks him in his backseat before they even leave the hotel parking lot and tries not to retch. Ian’s only three floors above them, half-choking on cheap tequila, but she gets back to campus before three. 

She’s still coming down from the high, and she spends most of the night wondering if this is what seventeen really is, if this is what the rest of her life is going to be. She doesn’t fall asleep until just after sunrise. Her alarm wakes her an hour later. She puts on her white dress, does her makeup with hands that don’t shake, collects her speech, and leaves to meet Harper and the theater teacher at the tent for a practice run speaking. 

At breakfast after she finishes the rehearsal for her speech, she sees Allie and Ian, but no one else she snuck out with last night. Ian catches her by the arm on her way to pick up her gown to tell her that everyone else got caught. It’s unspoken that no one sold the three of them out. It’s unspoken, too, that Ian knows exactly what happened with Charlie the night before, but she sees it in his eyes. It hurts more than anything that she hardly feels bad. 

She stands with Ian outside for pictures, then with Harper, then with Allie and some juniors who show up that she’s supposed to care about but can’t bring herself to.

The procession down to the tent makes her fingers thrum for a cigarette. Her mother is there this time, beside Lex in the same row. She doesn’t smile, and she doesn’t cry. She doesn’t hold up her bulky iPhone as Lena passes like the other parent’s do, but Lex does. She keeps her eyes on him when she gets up to give her speech, trying to ignore her mother. The thought that she’d like another bump of coke almost trips her up, but she collects herself as she walks to the podium, smiles out to the audience, and begins to speak, first congratulating Harper on her speech which was, infuriatingly, better than Lena’s own.

“I of course want to thank all the family, friends, faculty, staff, and students for being here today,” she starts, studiously looking anywhere but at her mother as she speaks. “The class of 2011 has been looking forward to this day for quite some time, and I’m glad you’re all here with us to celebrate. It’s because of all of you that we’ve made it this far, and this weekend is as much for you as it is for us,” she says. Even when she was writing it, she wasn’t sure it was a lie, even for her. The thought bothered her at the time, and it bothers her now, but she pauses for a breath and continues.

“In these last few days I’ve been thinking a lot about space. While I do believe it is the final frontier, it’s also how my classmates and I have defined ourselves these last few years. I’ve known the people around me by the spaces they’ve occupied: the football field, the biology lab, the theater. St. Brigid’s is more than its physical characteristics, but it is those things, too.”

The rest of Lena’s speech goes by like she isn’t the one delivering it. The teary goodbyes after they throw their caps go by like Lena isn’t the one hugging her teachers and classmates. Her mother takes pictures then gets in the waiting car. Lena finds she doesn’t even mind. Lex sticks around a while longer, then helps her load her car before he, too, leaves. Lena peels out quickly after, turning in everything she needs to as soon as she can so she can get off campus.

The drive back to the Luthor home is a few hours, but Lena finds herself drawing it out. She’s working <strike> with </strike> for Lex in the R&D Department this summer, and while she looks forward to the internship, she finds herself dreading being anywhere at all at the moment. She thinks about booking a hotel room with her fake I.D. It would take until at least tomorrow morning before Lex and her mother realized she hadn’t come home at all, and the thought is more than tempting. Still, she takes her exit, drives up through the gates, and sits down to dinner with her mother and brother.

That summer passes more quickly than she’d dared to hope for, and for that she is grateful. It takes her until mid-June to realize that she never actually broke up with Ian, but other than that the three months pass as expected. Move in is quickly approaching, and she packs earlier than she needs to.

She doesn’t need a car in Boston, Lex is busy with work and being distant, and her mother has no interest in helping her move in, so she has her driver take her over to Cambridge. She smokes a whole pack out in the stables before she leaves, and she knows Frank can smell it on her even with the perfume, but he doesn’t say anything, and they spent the ride mostly in pleasant silence.

She has a single, and orientation isn’t much more exciting than move in. Now that she’s out of Metropolis, not everyone recognizes her as Lillian’s daughter and Lex’s sister. It’s more than a bit refreshing, and she does start to make friends. More than that, though, she starts to make friends who happen to like clubbing, and a few of whom happen to be openly gay. Listening to Calvin talk about hooking up with guys after a night out makes something twist in her stomach, and she tries not to dwell on it.

She knows who she is, and who she is is a Luthor. Lillian doesn’t care if she’s gay, so it doesn’t matter if she’s gay. What matters is that she pretends she isn’t. Drawing from an Anne Sexton line she read years ago, Lena knows that it doesn’t matter who she is. It matters who people remember she is. This is something she’s known for as long as she can remember, without ever being explicitly told. She knows this, so she nods along to Calvin’s stories but doesn’t say anything that’s even outwardly supportive. 

Still, even though she knows who she has to be: straight, attractive, and politically neutral until proven or forced otherwise, she tags along with Calvin, Reese, Luca, Kelly, and two boys she doesn’t know to a club where all six of her gay friends and accquaintances expect to get laid. Lena doesn’t expect the same because she isn’t planning to try. 

And she doesn’t, but she does take the molly that Reese offers her. The Adderall she took earlier is wearing off, and she knows she shouldn’t be trying more drugs, yet alone actually taking them, but she does it anyway. It’s easy, and it turns out she really likes the way she feels when she’s rolling, especially when Calvin and Reese are, too. The music is loud, and she finds that she likes the dancing, and when a group of them goes back to the same club the next night, Lena repeats Friday then leaves with a black girl with a shaved head and spends the night in her dorm at Boston College. 

She continues a similar routine, tagging along with different groups of friends, for four weekends in a row, until she brings a pale redhead from Northeastern back to her room and someone sends photos to her mother. By someone, she’s not sure if she means a paparazzo or one her mother’s sycophants, but she’s not sure it makes much difference in the end.

It’s a Sunday in early October and she wakes up at ten to the first phone call she’s gotten from her mother. She knows, really, before she even answers what this must be about, and the pit in her stomach doesn’t lessen as she ignores the call and ushers the pretty girl out of her room, successfully ignoring the hurt look on her face as Lena begs her not to mention this. She calls her mother back. Lillian lets it ring four times, even though Lena knows she must be waiting by her phone.

“Good morning, Mother. You called?” Lena tries to keep the dread out of her voice, and though she knows she has a good poker face, there’s no way it works on Lillian.

“Lena.” She sounds almost amused. Lena’s mouth goes dry. She picks at her cuticles to distract herself.

“Yes?” she asks when Lillian doesn’t continue after a moment’s silence. She hates the way her mother can work her.

“I received some interesting photos early this morning. Would you like to guess what they were?” Lena doesn’t answer. She rips a string of translucent skin off the corner of her fingernail and lets it bleed.

“I assume you’ve spoken to that young woman about the consequences of spreading this story? What’s her name? Nellie Myers?” Lena’s throat goes tight. She closes her eyes against a sudden headache.

“Yes, Mother.”

“And I assume you know the consequences of continuing to contort yourself in such a manner?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“What we do in private is our business, Lena, but once you get careless your private life is no longer your own. You’re lucky Mr. Willis sent the pictures straight to me and that I was willing to pay him off. Imagine what would have happened had I been less generous.”

“Yes, Mother,” Lena says, and hates the way her voice doesn’t break as she starts to cry. Lillian pauses to sigh. Lena knows it’s more for show than anything.

“Do you remember Christopher Newman?” Lena doesn’t quite, but she knows he’s one of Lionel’s old friends. She’d wager everything she has that he’s on the board at LuthorCorp.

“Yes, Mother.”

“His son, Chris, is a junior at Harvard. I spoke with Mr. Newman, and we both think it will be beneficial if you and Chris start seeing each other.” Lena knows it isn’t a suggestion, but she’d like to believe she still has some agency here. She knows it’s a stupid hope.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Chris Newman has your phone number. He should be in contact shortly.”

“Of course,” Lena says. Lillian hangs up before Lena can say goodbye, not that she’s particularly bothered by that aspect of the call. 

Lena gets dressed for the day, does her full face of makeup, and walks to the gas station. She tears the plastic off the red cardboard package with shaking hands and lights up before she’s even around the corner.

Christopher Newman III calls her later that afternoon. He sounds nervous and it makes Lena tired, but at least he seems just as unhappy about this arrangement as she is. She agrees to meet him on Wednesday, and when she shows up at the coffee shop to see a blond guy who looks vaguely familiar, she realizes that she’s to be his beard, too. 

It works as well as she expects, which is to say they’re both high-profile enough to be photographed together in public and end up in a few bottom tier publications. They don’t have much in common besides money and being gay, and they don’t talk about that. In fact, Lena’s not sure Chris has even realized that the arrangement goes both ways.

She takes him clubbing with her and her friends and does coke in the bathroom since she can tell it would make him uncomfortable. They’re both a little drunk, but he can’t tell that she’s high, and she’s not sure he even realizes when she hooks up with a girl in the bathroom. It’s all fine.

Chris lives in Gotham and Lena goes home with him for Thanksgiving. It’s miserable, but she plays her part and it’s slightly preferable to going home, so she doesn’t complain even in private. She’s starting to think that the lesser of two evils is all she’ll ever get, but it’s not the worst she could do.

They break up over winter break after three months. Chris breaks up with her, so Lena assumed it’s the date he and his father agreed upon. She doesn’t care, but she acts upset for Lex and laughs with him about revenge plots. It’s the first time he’s really paid attention to her all year, and it almost makes the whole thing worth it.

Lena meets Jack Spheer in the second row of her physics class. It’s the first day of her second semester and she got the professor she wanted. The guy who sits down next to her is halfheartedly clean shaven and wearing a dark green sweater and jeans. Lena isn’t stupid enough to claim he’s not attractive.

He spends a lot of the lecture watching her, but he doesn’t say anything until the lecture is over. As soon as they’re dismissed, he turns back to her and smiles.

“Hey, I’m Jack.” She purses her lips subconsciously, but holds out a hand for him to shake.

“Lena.”

“Luthor?” he asks, taking her hand with a smile. Lena’s not sure why, but every time someone knows who she is before she tells them she gets a strange sense of foreboding. Now is no different.

“Yes.” She pulls her hand away.

“I thought that’s who you were!” He hasn’t stopped smiling, and he sounds genuinely excited. Lena’s finished packing all her stuff away, but she doesn’t get up.

“I read a paper about an experiment that you worked on last summer. About carcinogenesis?” Despite herself, Lena smiles.

She has another class to get to, but Jack asks if she wants to come to a party that some of the people on the Robotics Team are throwing on Thursday. Lena rolls her eyes and agrees.

The first thing she notices about Jack—like _ really _ notices about him—is that he smokes Newports but offers her Marlboros at the party. She hasn’t smoked in front of him, and when she raises a silent eyebrow he shrugs, a little sheepish, and tells her he saw them in her bag during class. 

For the first time in her life, Lena wishes she was straight not because it’s what she’s supposed to be, but because she could actually see herself dating a man. It hurts in a way that makes her dread how this whole thing will end, but she brushes it aside and takes the offered cigarette. Jack lights his own, then leans closer so she can monkey-fuck the lit end. It makes her blush. She hates that it makes her blush. She feels like she’s promising Jack something she can never fulfil.

Lena and Jack spend that summer crammed into a rented house on the outskirts of Metropolis. Lex rags on her for moving in with a man so quickly and pretends he misses her helping with R&D at LuthorCorp. She doesn’t believe him for a moment, but she appreciates the effort, and she smiles through his jokes. Her mother tells her it looks bad but doesn’t tell her to stop. She and Jack are blatantly working on something, and she knows that her mother means it looks bad in a way that will ultimately help her image: it makes her look young and smart and carefree.

She sleeps with Jack only once, and wakes up early the next morning. Jack finds her on the back porch, halfway through a pack of Marlboros and crying. Lena thinks he might just get her well enough to already know what’s wrong, but he asks anyway. It’s the first time Lena’s ever actually told anyone she’s gay. Jack’s smile is tight like he was hoping she would say something else, but he does smile.

He pushes her out of the way so he can sit down before he pulls her back into his lap. They stay out there for over an hour while he smokes the rest of the pack with her. When he exhales, he blows smoke against Lena’s ear and she pretends to be annoyed. He says they both have to stop this if they want to be taken seriously about curing cancer, and though Lena’s had the same thought, she laughs so hard she almost burns his leg.

She stops sleeping with <strike> people </strike> women, and her mother thinks she’s dating Jack. She doesn’t contradict her, and she visits his family at the holidays as often as she can. She feels like Jack’s getting the short end of the stick, but he acts like he doesn’t mind. She knows he’s in love with her, and she wishes hard enough that it hurts that she could be in love with him, too. He knows how she feels, and it’s as good as she can get.

She never goes out with Jack. He smokes a lot of pot, but he isn’t a big drinker, and he got so mad the first time he realized Lena was on coke that she wants to avoid that ever happening again. She’s mostly kicked her Adderall habit, which was always mild enough for him to tease her for it, but it’s not like she didn’t replace it. 

Still, it’s her junior year that things get really bad.

Even then, it’s mostly fine until Lex kills thirty-two people. Instead of going home, Lena goes out and gets more fucked up than she ever has before. She has to call Jack to bring her home.

He’s so angry she can feel it even through her coked up brain, but he doesn’t scold her. He tucks her into his own bed. She wakes up once to vomit, and then again in the morning. She feels like shit and Jack isn’t here. She flies home without saying goodbye and uses her fake on the plane. She’s not sure the stewardess believes her, but she clearly recognizes her, and it doesn’t seem like she wants to argue.

Even after everything is over and Lex receives thirty-two consecutive life sentences, she finds herself avoiding Jack. It makes her feel more lonely than if he were avoiding her. She starts drinking in her own apartment and doing a bump every morning. It’s fine for a while, but she’s never sober. She doesn’t see that as a bad thing.

Except to go to class, she hasn’t left her place in almost two weeks. She buys molly off of Reese who looks unwilling but sells it to her anyway when she offers an extra hundred dollars. She goes home and drinks three fingers of scotch and an entire pack of Smirnoff Ice.

She’s never done molly alone, and it turns out—rather unsurprisingly—that it’s awful, especially mixed with the amount of coke she’s been doing and after she smoked salvia with a guy she knows just wanted to fuck her two nights ago. She’s exhausted when she shouldn’t be, drunk and on multiple uppers, and she finds herself staring at her own face in the mirror. She looks ragged. She hates her mother. She loves her brother. She feels so transparent she swears she can see her teeth through her lips. She’s not sure why anyone believes she’s okay, why anyone believes she’s been okay for years. She wants to stop. 

She calls Jack. She yells at him and hates herself for it. He doesn’t yell back but he does come over. She doesn’t fall asleep until morning, and he sits with her the whole time, playing a movie she barely remembers telling him is her favorite. 

Lena doesn’t go to rehab, but she does get better. She gets a damn good therapist and she stops doing drugs. It’s a terrible summer, but her life gets better after that. Her therapist wants her to stop drinking but that’s a little ridiculous, especially after she takes over LuthorCorp.

She and Jack get an apartment together for senior year and continue to work on their own research around their classes. It’s nice to have him there, even if it sometimes feels like he’s breathing down her neck. She stops hanging out with her other friends; all she ever did with them was go out, and <strike> she’s not supposed to </strike> she doesn’t do that anymore. Jack never did, so they stay the same. He even stops smoking pot.

She gains almost twenty pounds and Jack finds her crying in the bathroom. They spend a full week arguing about appetite after that, but it’s never malicious, and Lena knows he’s right even if she has a hard time coming to terms with everything that getting better means.

Smoking is the easiest thing to kick, but it’s the only thing she lets herself go back to.

Jacks gets onto her about it, but not too badly. She thinks it mostly bugs him because he wants to smoke, too. He tells her he’ll move out the next time he sees her smoking, but when exams roll around in December and he finds her on the fire escape, he just rolls his eyes.

They move to Metropolis after graduation so Lena can take over LuthorCorp. She hires Samantha Arias and the three of them hang out in her office after Sam and Jack get off work. Jack doesn’t like her drinking too much so they sip watered-down scotch and laugh while Lena works hours after everyone else. 

She thinks she can live like this forever, even if it isn’t anything. She still hasn’t come out publicly, even though her profile has skyrocketed. The world seems to think she and Jack will get married and she doesn’t have the guts to contradict them.

She and Jack continue to work on their cure for cancer right up until she moves across the country. Jack begs her not to. It’s the only fight they ever have that’s not about drugs, and it’s the only fight that ever gets mean. Lena cries for over half of the plane ride and doesn’t text Jack when she lands.

She talks to Sam some, all under the guise of work, and Sam tells her she hasn’t seen Jack in months, either. Lena finds herself getting lonely in a way she hasn’t felt since boarding school, but she works through it. Literally, she works through the hours she should be alone in her empty apartment to avoid thinking about the friends she doesn’t have.

She comes out in an interview that she _ knows _ Jack will read, but she doesn’t hear from him. It all hurts, but she doesn’t regret getting clean, as much as she sometimes hates that she is. Her new therapist tells her she’s doing well but should try to make more friends. Lena brushes it off.

When she meets Kara Danvers, things start to look up for the first time in years.


End file.
